Registry Hacking /For Games

Theory: The registy is an essential part of the windows operatig system. It contains a collection of specific data that are essential for the functioning of any particular software or game. The data inside the registry is catagorised into sub folders and is arranged heirarchially. The sub folders are arranged alphabetically. A default Windows XP registry has 5 base folders, namely 1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, 2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER, 3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, 4. HKEY_USERS & 5. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG. Open the registry editor by going to Start-Run and type Regedit and press Enter Obtaining the game registry values: The functions of each of these folders is not quite important for us, but one could get a general idea about them just by looking at their names. For the process of ripping, let us look at two of these folders in detail. HKEY_CURRENT_USER & HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE You may notice that all folders have a small plus sign next to them. Clicking on the plus sign will reveal their sub-folders and now the plus will turn into a minus sign. Inside these two folders you may notice a folder called Software. This is the folder that contains essential information about various applications. Let us consider that we rae ripping a game now. First you may need to collect information about the game such as the games developer and publisher names. Now most developers have a common location where they store the information inside the registry. Some common loactions are

You do not have sufficient rights to see the hidden data contained here.

Now finding the location is a simple task. As you can see above, the name of the sub-folder always contains the name of the developer, just a minute or two of search will point you in the right path. After you have found the location of the registry values, simply right click on the folder at the right pane and choose EXPORT, and save is somewhere safe.

Now you will see that the file saved into a .reg file. All registry files have the extension reg. Now all you need to do to get the games registry-data into the registry of the person installing your rip is to import this reg file. Confusing??? Heres the thing. Why do i need this registry ? You installed the game in your PC. So the installer creates a data stream inside your registry which contains information about the game you just installed. So now after you rip the game, you give it out to you public. You either upload it in the internet or you share it with your friends. Either way, that person who installs you rip has only your installer and not the original installer given by the developer of the game. Therefore the data stream which contains information about the game is not being created in the registry by default. The installer that you made in Basic ripping tutorial only extract the game files to his hard drive. So now we have to solve this problem. Writing data into registry: We have exported the data that the game installer creates in the registry. This exported data is in the form of a REG file. We need to look at the contents of this file in order to know what information is contained inside the registry that is so essential for the game to run. Fear not, heres a simple solution. Open the REG file using Notepad :-). Yes notepad, the simplest of all text editors. My reg file contains some data such as follows. (Registry information for NBA Live 2008 German) __________________________________________________ ______________________________ __________________ Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA SPORTS] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA SPORTS\NBA LIVE 08] DisplayName=EA SPORTS NBA LIVE 08 CD Drive=f:\\ ProductName=EA SPORTS NBA LIVE 08 Installed From=f:\\ Locale=de Language=German Patch URL=http://patches.ea.com/nbalive08/ Product GUID={39C8EFBA-042B-11DC-A860-0EE955D89593} Region=EU Suppression Exe=" Registration=Software\\Electronic Arts\\EA SPORTS\\NBA LIVE 08\\ergc [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA SPORTS\NBA LIVE 08\1.0]

DisplayName=NBA LIVE 08 Language=dword:00000003 LanguageName=German

__________________________________________________ ______________________________ __________________ Learning to interpret registry information: Let us try to understand what the contents of the registry file mean. 1. The first line contains information of the version of the registry editor used to export the reg file 2. All data contained within square brackets [ ] denote the path where the information is stored. Any folder that does not exist will be created. 3. All data within double quotes denote the information regarding our game Now let us look at the above example and try to decode some of the contained information, its no big deal really. Some of the information i made out from the above registry file: * Name of the game = EA SPORTS NBA LIVE 08 * My CD Drives path = F:\ * I installed the game from a cd in drive F:\ * Installed Game Language = German * Website to open if i user clicks on patch option = http://patches.ea.com/nbalive08/ * Product ID given by the company ( for patching ) = 39C8EFBA-042B-11DC-A8600EE955D89593 * DVD Region = Europe * Location of Registration info in registry = Software\\Electronic Arts\\EA SPORTS\\NBA LIVE 08\\ergc * Language code for German = 00000003 As you can see, it is very easy to decode this information. Now that we have understood all this information, let us enter into the toughest part of registry hacking. These information are meant only for my computer. Another persons computer may have the cd drive at a different location. So let us avoid such misinformation by deleting the line CD Drive=f:\\ and the line Installed From=f:\\. So this way the game does not search the wrong drive for the disc. Always remember, no-data is better than wrong data. All the other information are common so we may leave that as it is. Importing data into the registry: 1. Create the game rip as in Basic ripping tutorial 2. Add the game.reg file along with the other game files 3. Create the Setup.bat file as in Basic ripping tutorial 4. Now open the Setup.bat file and add the following /**\

copy game.reg C:\ nul regedit.exe /S game.reg /**\ I have used copy to copy the game.reg file into the C: drive. This is not essential but please remember, the registry information will not be imported if the location of the reg file contains spaces. Eg: Importing reg file from D:\game.reg - Works D:\Games\game.reg - Works D:\Games\My rip\game.reg - Does not work The third case does not work because the loacation has a space between My and rip. Now the /S option in the regedit.exe command has been used to disable all information pop ups and silently import the registry file. ::::::::.????????????????????????????????.::::::::